Order of the Supreme Court of India in the matter of Network of People Living With HIV/AIDS & Others Vs Union of India & Others dated 24/02/2025. The Supreme Court (SC), February 24, 2025 has directed all states to file their affidavits addressing concerns raised about antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs …
With no major breakthroughs in the fight against aids, the just-concluded 10th Annual International Conference on the disease, held at Yokohama, Japan, turned out to be a routine affair. The only new approach was using the tools of genetic engineering to alter the immune systems of newborns to enable them …
Indian industries have begun to step up AIDS-awareness measures for their estimated 60 million strong workforce. A study by the Punjab, Haryana and Delhi Chambers of Commerce and Industry (PHDCCI) reveals that only 1 person in 100 among industrial workers are aware of AIDS. Worse, many north Indian workers even …
WHEN is India going to wake up to its AIDS crisis? Michael Marson, chief of the World Health Organisation's AIDS-control programme, says that India should declare an "AIDS emergency". Jacob John, one of India's top virologists, puts the doubling time of HIV incidence in India at 2 years, maintaining that …
THE AIDS drug zidovudine can retard the transmission of the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) from a mother to her foetus, a recent study reveals (Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol 271, No 11). Trials carried out by the US-based National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) show …
A RECENT Consumer Court verdict dismissing a compensation claim by a woman who was infected with the HIV virus following blood transfusion at the Wanless hospital in Miraj in Maharashtra may hold grave consequences for patients, fear activists. Subsequently, a child the woman gave birth to also carried the AIDS …
NEWBORN children whose mothers suffer from a severe form of AIDS may develop the disease quicker, a recent French study reveals. The finding by Stephane Blanche and his colleagues at the Paris-based Hospital Necker Enfants Malades, could help prevent the pre-natal transmission of the infection (The New England Journal of …
Police in Bombay are paying a high price for mixing business with pleasure; One of the two policemen who tested HIV positive last December was a constable posted in a red-light area, according to the chief police surgeon of Bombay police, S Uppe. Incidentally, the first policeman in the country …
ALTHOUGH the threat of AIDS haunts Delhi's brothels, neither the government nor any voluntary organisation has determined the prevalence of the disease among the Capital's sex workers. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), HIV infections among sex workers in Bombay increased from 1 per cent in 1986 to 35 …
THE INCREASE in high-risk sexual contacts between homosexual beach boys and tourists in Sri Lanka has worried the government. Though there have been only 22 cases of AIDS to date, the government's chief venereologist, Gamini Jayakuru, estimates as many as 2,500 Sri Lankans are HIV positive, registering a rise of …
World AIDS Day in early December saw a rash of programmes on the battle against the disease, with Doordarshan and the satellite channels doing their bit to publicise the enormous degree of education and mobilisation needed to meet this killer head-on. One drab discussion on Doordarshan's morning show was enlivened …
The claim by Ayurveda practitioners that it can combat the dreaded HIV virus is only now being examined by the India's scientific establishment. Researchers at the National Institute of Immunology (NII) in New Delhi have begun investigating the anti-HIV properties of seven plants -- Tulsi (Ocimum), Brahmi (Centella), Ashwagandha (Withania …
THE CREDIBILITY of China's controversial Three Gorges project to build the world's largest dam across the Yangtze river has received a setback. Two US government agencies -- the Bureau of Reclamation and the Army Corps of Engineers -- said they will sever their involvement in the project after completing work …
When the AIDS-causing human immunodeficiency virus was discovered a decade ago, researchers were confident of finding a way to check its growth. Today, about 13 million people have been infected with HIV, but science is still groping in the dark for a cure for AIDS. NEVER underestimate your enemy. But …
RESEARCHERS are unsure of being able to devise a simple series of shots that would give a person lifetime protection against AIDS. To do that, a vaccine will have to ward off all the current HIV strains as well as any future mutants. Vaccines are basically harmless imposters intended to …
HIV IS fast spreading its tentacles in India. According to the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO), more than 300 people have contacted AIDS since the first case was reported in India in 1986. It is feared that by the turn of the century, about five million persons in the country …
NEARLY 37 million people in the United States have no health insurance at all. Meanwhile, the money spent on health care has been rising steadily till last year, it touched $800 billion -- more than 14 per cent of the country's gross domestic product. But all that will be a …
"ONE OF the best investments the global community can make is in AIDS prevention," says Dr Michael H Mezon, director of the Global Programme on AIDS (GPA) of the World Health Organisation. "Money spent now on changing behaviour to slow the spread of infection will return billions of dollars of …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
WHEN AIDS first came to Africa, the continent's leaders accused the rich whites of the world of foisting the disease on poor blacks to develop a market for western pharmaceuticals. The Indian government hasn't shown this degree of paranoia, but its requirement that long-staying foreigners be HIV-negative reveals its suspicion …
A SERIOUS error acknowledged recently by AIDS researchers at USA's prestigious Harvard Medical School is being cited as an example of what can happen when scientists rush into clinical trials pleading that the urgency of their work excuses corner-cutting. In the Harvard incident, field trials were held nationally, based on …
